Louis Béroud entered the Louvre museum and proceeded as usual to the section with the Mona Lisa, only to discover the portrait was gone. Probably out on the roof, in daylight being photographed, Béroud thought, but in a few hours the guards determined it wasn’t. The museum closed, and an intense search began – the Mona Lisa was gone. Stolen. All sorts of wild theories were proposed, none of them leading to a definite suspect, although several arrests were made. After several years went by, the most commonly accepted theory was one of the cleaners somehow destroyed the painting and then covered it up with a faux robbery. But the Mona Lisa was alive and well.

On this day, December 1913, more than two years after its disappearance, the Mona Lisa was recovered from one Vincenzo Peruggia, a former janitor at the museum.

Peruggia, under the name Leonardo Vencenzo, first made contact with an Italian art collector, asking for half a million for it, and that it would be displayed in Italy, from whence it was stolen by Napoleon. The art collector contacted the Louvre, and together they went to see the painting, which they judged to be authentic. Peruggia allowed them to leave with the painting to verify its authenticity; as soon as they left, the police arrested him.